Kemi Badenoch

[CassieMaddox]

Looking unlikely to win the Conservative leadership now and has gone very quiet about women's rights/the EA during her campaign.

Current favourite is Cleverly.

I know she had a lot of support on here so just wondering what people thought had gone wrong for her?

If some children are being "left to struggle on" just as your generation had to ... , because they have unrecognised SEN, that's a failure of the SEN system. It doesn't mean that children who have been proved to need help shouldn't get it.

And my interpretation of Badenoch's remarks is that there is a failure of the SEN system. There is also a political question about the effectiveness of SEN provision and about some other aspects of the welfare state. It is clear to me that theoretically there is a point at which generous state help disincentivises self help, and actually makes people more dependent. I think it is a legitimate question to ask "at what point are we encouraging dependency?" I am on the fence about this - I know people who need support, but who are encouraged by some to see themselves as incapable and having little or no agency in learning the skills to be more independent. My own view is that the vast majority of people want to work and want to do a good job. The difficult questions, both for their managers and for politicians, are "what help is effective" and "how much help is actually helpful in the long term". These are legitimate political questions.

Only if they need one. Same way as if a child has mobility problems they are supplied with walking aids.

Your thinking about gifted kids is a good example of why people feel this has become a problem.

Because it sounds very much like you don't think that all students needs should be considered equally. In fact you said this above - the law requires that the needs of some are put above the needs of others.

It actually wouldn't matter what group, or individual, this applied to. If gifted kids were prioritized, and it would be possible to make a social argument for that, at the expense of other children, I expect you'd see that as deeply unfair.

Gifted children have needs of their own that often aren't well met through the school system. Programs to address these have largely disappeared, parents are told they need to use their own funds to compensate.

This is an issue that is going to come back to bite I suspect - thee seems to be increasing unhappiness in the population generally around special provisions. Most people like to see children (and adults) in need helped, but they don't like it when there seems to be more value put on some than others.

There will always be "unrecognized" needs btw. For one thing,there are always new things to learn, that's not a failure, it's just reality.

But also - not all needs have a diagnosis. The child in a class who really struggles with noise and disruption is not less valuable with the kid who can't control his behaviour and creates noise and disruption.If her parents can't afford to send her to private education,or to be transported to a school further away, why is that child less important than a child who is given transportation for a different school due to SEN?

It's not working as a system for all children.

You make some good points Tempest Tost.

As a teacher teaching mixed ability classes I always felt very compromised, and felt that the children were too. The tendency in many schools/most schools is to teach to the middle; and in others to focus on the lower ability in order to bring them up; whereas the very bright children are often neglected, not strectched enough and left to get on with it by themselves. There is an assumption they don't require additional support.

In such situations nobody really get their learning needs met, and everyone is compromised.

Bright children have every right to be stretched to their maximum and develop their potential, just as children with additional learning needs often require more one to one or structured support.

It's more a case of :Equality feels like oppression to those with privilege. A tale as old as time.

Has KB "clarified" her position yet?

Surely equality is everyone having equal access to resources in order to meet their specific needs. Equality is not about every being the same, but about making accommodations for differnces too. A bright child in the mainstream classroom is not necessarily privileged just because they do not have an obvious disability.

In many schools bright, keen pupils have their lessons continually disrupted by those with behavioural issues Every attemot is made to keep the disruptive child/ren in the class - to the cost of the rest.

I can't help feeling that some posters who have children with diagnosed or even non diagnosed additional needs are, as a result of what I suggest is a determined misrepresentation and interpretation of Badenoch's interview, taking a rather mean spirited and resentful attitude towards the needs and rights of other children, as well as making judgmental comments about others who post here.

Nobody, including Badenoch, has said children with diagnosed additional needs should not be supported no matter how much people try to spin it.

Like how MRAs feel feminists are mean spirited and resentful of men @Shortshriftandlethal?

I could get behind this

https://archive.ph/cHdKC bypass paywall

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/kemi-badenoch-i-would-give-jk-rowling-a-peerage-qqbsr22rj

Although it's odd that with all the charity work, the amount of money HP must have brought to the UK, Beira's Place, etc. that she hasn't already got one it isn't really, too scared of the TAs.

Although it's odd that with all the charity work, the amount of money HP must have brought to the UK, Beira's Place, etc. that she hasn't already got one

I think you had to donate to the Tory Party for the last government to give you an honour.

If she hasnt got a peerage by now, its because she doesnt want one.

She can have a peerage when she's finished the Strike series. Not before!

I'm not resentful of men as a group, myself. You cannot paint such broad brush generalisations as far as I'm concerned. I'm not a victim of 'the patriarchy,' and don't see women as being necessarily oppressed as a group.

I do believe, however, that women and girls have dignity and integrity and in some circumstances require sex specific spaces and categories in order to accommodate their differences. Men cannot become women. Sex is a biological category not a social/identity category.

Lord Ali received his peerage from the Tony Blair government. He's been donating funds for a long time. All political partes are guilty of this

Of course JK Rowling once donated £1 million to the Labour Party - and has quietly been going about supporting various charities for many years.

Surely equality is everyone having equal access to resources in order to meet their specific needs.

Equal access to resources does not result in equality. For example, everyone being given walking aids, doesn't bring about equality.

Only pathetic, thick, knuckle dragging fuckwits see disabled children and are resentful of the often in adequate resources they get to enable them access the same education as their peers.

These are the people Kemi Badenoch is trying to appeal to in this pamphlet.

I'm not resentful of men as a group myself.

And I'm not resentful of children who don't have SEN, or their parents.

Equality is therefore a concept - by your own diagnosis. There is no such thing as equality - because different people and different groups have different needs and requirements. Nobody is the exact same as anyone else.

You are largely arguing with yourself here and getting yourself into a very angry place.. Swearing and name calling and making unfounded suggestions achieves nothing and doesn't improve acccess to education or resources for anyone. I suggest your inherent antipathy to Badenoch is clouding your thinking and making it impossible to have a reasonable discussion about any of her comments. Everything is twisted to feed and inflate a grievance.

You seem determined to think that she ( and even other posters here) wants to make you and your family suffer because she/they has prejudiced views about children with autism; and in taking this stance you fail to understand the larger point she/they was and are trying to make.

What is the larger point Badenoch was making?

Read back over the many posts here - some very well written and with consideration. Particularly those by Tempest Tost. I''m not going to repeat things I've already wriiten about or which have already been outlined - just because you either will not acknowledge, or maybe didn't even read them in the first instance.

I have read them. They're imaginative waffles that end with the fact that the posters don't know what Kemi meant and they're just guessing.

Do you know what she meant, or are you guessing too?

Do you want to try a wee critical thinking excercise @Shortshriftandlethal?

Read over those posts again, only this time replace Kemi Badenoch with Lisa Nandy, Nichola Sturgeon, Nigel Farage, any politician you disagree with really.

Would you agree with them? Would you defend what was said if they said it?

I'm not guessing. Nor is the National Autistic Society, other SEN charities and the press who have reported on it.

If she was actually being misrepresented surely she would have clarified by now. It's a pretty important time for her and the Tory Party.

The National Autistic Society hasn't really covered itself with glort in terms of protecting those with autism from having their bodies fucked up by gender ideology.

Why would anyone assume their critical thinking skills are all that great? They don't engage with larger questions, they don't see it as their job.

Many lobby groups focus, in terms of political policy responses, solely on their own people, without any concern about what policies or direction means to anyone else. Some would say that's as it should be, I think it causes a lot of problems in the political process. But what it inevitably means is they don't engage with any of the larger questions and their opinions don't reflect the needs or other groups or people, or justice generally.

We've all seen how this works in terms of other interest groups.